


Sink or Swim

by moorglade



Category: First Monday
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Internalized Homophobia, Self-Acceptance, Shipwrecks, Swimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 10:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9380099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moorglade/pseuds/moorglade
Summary: A sinking boat leaves Julian stranded on the rocks, and the tide's rising all around him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely the fault of whoever it was tweeted a link to [these pieces of pure joy and amazement](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4nTOWnPE3A) (I know someone did, but I cannot for the life of me find the tweet). The next thing I know, I'm writing fic about someone who _isn't John Sheppard_ (even if he is still Joe Flanigan). As far as I can tell, he was actually around thirty-five when this was filmed, but hey, if John could knock three years off JF's age...
> 
> Dedicated to the authors of the other twenty-eight FM fics on AO3: thank you for ensuring that when I rushed off to look for fic, I didn't come up with nothing.

Julian Lodge is thirty-two years old. He wears exactly the right suits, and exactly the right shirts; it was long, long ago that he cut himself to fit their cloth. He knows exactly what to think on all of the important issues facing the country today, and he has all the citations and references he needs at his fingertips. He’s always impeccably groomed. He’s a young man in the right place at the right time, with the right connections to take him far. He’s not had an original thought in years. 

He’s having them now. 

\- 

There wasn’t enough room in the lifeboat for everyone, but Julian had faith in US institutions, and that included the Coastguard. A gentleman put women and children first. The rogue wave had damaged the boat, and run it onto the rocks, but it wasn’t actually sinking. So he volunteered to stay on the wreck until help arrived, and fretted about what the sea air was doing to the lining of his suit, and didn’t watch the little inflatable boat labouring in the grey swells until it vanished from sight. 

Six of them had stayed, and Julian was glad to see that chivalry was still alive and well in his fellow man. It wouldn’t be so tedious waiting for rescue with company, and it would make an amusing story to tell later. 

“You coming or not?” one of the men said, removing his shoes. Julian stared at him in bewilderment for a moment – going? Going where? There was nowhere _to_ go – and then he got it. 

“Are you _seriously_ suggesting swimming for it? You’ll be dead of hypothermia within half an hour, assuming you don’t drown first, after spending what little time you have left going round and around in directionless circles. Or you could wait on this non-functional but perfectly _dry_ boat until the appropriate experts arrive. It’s a free country, though, so you do as you like.” 

“Suit yourself,” the man said, diving smoothly into the water to join the others. “Tide’s past the turn. Those rocks will be completely under four hours from now.” 

“And the Coastguard will be here three hours before that,” Julian said. 

“Yeah, assuming the lifeboat makes it, and lets them know. You do _know_ the radio was wrecked? No one’s coming to save you. If you’re not going to help yourself – ” 

“I don’t swim,” Julian said, sitting down with deliberate poise. 

“We’ll tell them it was suicide,” the man said. “Better to stick together than drown out here alone, but hey – it’s a free country.” 

Julian watches the five heads moving purposefully through the grey water, until he can’t see them anymore. 

“I can’t swim,” he says to nobody. Nobody listens, and nobody cares, and nobody is the only person there to hear. 

\- 

People make assumptions about Julian. He doesn’t just accept that; he encourages it. The way he walks, the way he talks, the way he dresses: they’re carefully calibrated to create the right impression. 

No one works in Washington without their past being an open secret. Julian changed his name the day he was old enough to do so in his own right, just before he applied to law school. It wouldn’t discourage any truly determined digging, but it was enough to allow him to pass unnoticed. No one had yet bothered to investigate him in any more detail. 

It was the best birthday present he’d ever received. 

\- 

It’s cold, and Obnoxious Swimmer was right about one thing: either the tide is rising, or the boat is sinking. The water is leaden grey, and it’s getting dark, and there’s a mist in the air which is either spray or the beginnings of rain. 

It’s been a while since Julian was really alone. The last months he’s practically lived at the Supreme Court, only returning home to sleep and shower and change clothes. His tiny apartment isn’t really _home_ , but what does that matter? He’s doing work which ensures a better future for all Americans. Public service always makes great demands on those dedicated enough to devote themselves to it. 

It’s been a long while since Julian wasn’t alone. 

\- 

His mother swam; she’d had to do something to counteract the wine, and the beer, and the gin. It had mattered to her to keep her figure. Men overlooked the lack of past, and the lack of future, but they wouldn’t have looked at all if she hadn’t stayed slim and pretty. 

_My mother_ , Julian says when he has to, letting what he doesn’t say speak louder than his actual words of a socialite in cocktail dresses, whose devotion to family values helped make him the man he is today. 

They always stayed somewhere near a pool, and his mother swam: endless perfect lengths until some man took the bait. Julian didn’t like the boyfriends much, and they didn’t like him either. They’d wanted a cute kid they could impress, to win his mother’s approval. They didn’t care much for an overly-serious one who sat by the pool studying, and stared at them with flat contempt. 

He’d learned early on that they would never stay anywhere long enough for anyone to be responsible for his education but himself. There was one way out of the life he’d been born into, and he was going to snatch at it with both hands. 

When Julian was sixteen, his mother landed Victor. They were married within three months, and none of them shed any tears when Julian moved away. 

\- 

When the waves reach the deck of the boat, Julian retreats to the rocks. They’re slightly drier, and there’s a flattish boulder where he can sit down, his back against the wall. It doesn’t really matter that they’re covered with seaweed, green and slimy and clinging; his $3800 suit and his $2900 shoes are soaked with so much salt water that no dry cleaners in the world will be able to rescue them. 

He starts to shiver when what remains of the boat suddenly tips up and disappears beneath the waves, with an innocuous gurgle like the last dregs of a bottle being emptied. Perhaps this is it; perhaps in an hour or two that will be him, sliding under the waves with no trace left behind. 

Julian’s cleaning lady will assume he’s working, and she won’t bother about where until she doesn’t get paid. Jerry and Ellie and Miguel won’t wonder where he is; they’ll just be grateful he’s not there. Chief Justice Brankin will be annoyed and inconvenienced and baffled, and Julian will be replaced by another ambitious young lawyer within twenty-four hours of him failing to arrive. Six weeks after he's gone he’ll just be one of those weird stories which float round D.C., about a secret life or a past which caught up with him, or just possibly a nervous breakdown. 

\- 

By the time Julian arrived at law school, it was too late to learn to swim, even if he’d had any desire to: it didn’t fit with the person he was making himself into. He’d picked up baseball from Joey and basketball from Carlton, and if Victor had given him nothing else, he’d taught him to golf and to play squash. 

That was enough. Julian didn’t have time to be anything other than athletic enough to fit in. He wasn’t only learning about case law and precedents, but how to build the collegial connections he’d need to make up for the fact he didn’t have any family ones. The little leisure time he had was devoted to that end. And if that made him a number of allies and not many friends, well, he didn’t have time for them either. 

Swimming was a ridiculous luxury for people who had time to waste. Julian believed in the American Dream, and he was going to work and work and work until he never had to worry any more about keeping his head above water. 

And if there were other reasons, like the… trunks, and the near nudity, and the communal showers, he was very good at not thinking about them. 

\- 

Julian Lodge is thirty-two years old, and he’s never kissed another man. He’s slept with plenty of women. Some of them he’s even liked, but all of them have been _useful_ , ideally in several ways at once. They don’t ever stay around for long, but that’s fine; Julian doesn’t want them to. It’s simply better that his reputation verges a little too much towards the promiscuous than a difficult-to-explain celibacy. 

He’s worked too hard to let anything get in the way of his future, even if that something might have been happiness. 

He tries not to think about what it might be like. There’s no sense pining for what he can’t have. If he let another man kiss him – Jerry, say, to take an example purely at random – then it wouldn’t stop with a kiss. He’d let Jerry touch him – those big hands, coming up to frame his face, tilting it back and _up_ , rather than down. Jerry would kiss him like he thought it was something he _wanted_ , and he’d – he’d – 

Julian’s had too much practice not to suppress the thought there. It’s not as though he really knows what two men might do together, anyway. 

He’s never allowed himself to find out. 

\- 

Out in the wind and rain and the wild sea, Julian can feel his careful poise eroding with each wave. They’re starting to break against the rock he’s now standing on, and he dreads being swept away, to be battered against the rocks until he gives up fighting, and lets the sea take him. 

The only alternative is the wall of rock behind him. It’s not sheer, but it’s slimy and slick with seawater, and it’s so high. It’s so high, and Julian’s been scaling impossible heights all his life, and he’s so tired. He’s not sure he can make himself climb this new wall and hold on in the cold and dark until rescue comes. 

If it comes, of course. If he’s the only survivor, no one will know where the boat went down. No one will care that he’s missing until Monday morning, when Chief Justice Brankin will find no one waiting in his chambers. 

The Chief Justice is a good man, and he probably will be concerned that Julian’s gone, but he won’t know where to start looking. No one will, because it’s been a long time since Julian was close enough to anybody that he didn’t think it inadvisably imprudent to share his movements with them. 

If rescue doesn’t come it’ll just be him and the rocks, and then the fall, and then the sea. 

\- 

By the time he was five years old, Julian had learned that _second best_ was another word for _first loser_. He’d decided that was never going to be him. 

Underneath the bespoke suits and the attitude, the learning and the social status, he’s always aware of the place he came from, no matter how he tries to camouflage his past. But what he could do was to fight for a better place in the world, and he’s done just that. 

Julian has always had to be the best: in every class, at each new school, at his law school. He’s had to take the right classes, with the right professors, and network as though his life depended on it. 

He learned to fight with every weapon he could lay his hands on, whether it was fighting dirty or not. Julian learned to be ruthless a long time ago, when he realised that winning wasn’t always about being the best, but simply being the last one still standing. He’s got awfully good at throwing people under the bus in the name of making himself a better future. 

He’s starting to wonder if, just maybe, the first person he’d sacrificed so cavalierly might have been Julian Lodge. 

\- 

Julian indulges himself where he can. He imports pepper that tastes twice as good as the regular kind, and costs fifty times as much. His suits and shirts and bow ties are all bespoke, and his shoes are handmade. If money can buy it, he’s got it. 

He never starved as a child – the boyfriends always put food on the table, if they did nothing else – but he knew what it was to want and want and want for something, and not to get it. 

That was good practice for adult life, as it turned out. 

\- 

When a wave splashes over the rock, soaking him to the waist, Julian decides that maybe the rock wall behind him isn’t such a bad choice after all. 

He doesn’t want to die. 

Not because of the immeasurable loss to American jurisprudence, or because anyone will mind that he’s gone, but because he’s thirty-two years old, and he’s never _lived_. 

Perhaps the Coastguard is on the way, and the headlines will read SUPREME COURT CLERK FOUND CLINGING TO ROCK: ONLY SURVIVOR NOT TO SWIM FOR IT. It would be embarrassing and impossible to live down, and probably torpedo his career as a lawmaker irretrievably, but at least he’d be alive to experience that. 

If he dies, they’ll probably have to identify him from his dental records, assuming his corpse is even found. No one will come forward to report him as missing. 

Another wave crashes over his feet, and he scrambles a bit higher. 

“I’m not going to die,” he says to nobody, but the wind carries the words away before he’s finished speaking. 

\- 

Julian genuinely likes Chief Justice Brankin. He’s not just an outstanding legal mind, with solid, decent political opinions, but he’s a good man. Julian started planning out his career path long before he started law school – which classes to take, which professors he needed to build relationships with, whose recommendations he would need to take him through two previous clerkships, and then on to the Supreme Court. 

Life has been a series of dominoes: toppled one, by one, by one. Julian’s always been ambitious, and Chief Justice Brankin has given him the biggest opportunity of his whole life. In return, he’s willing to do all the dirty jobs that people that people like Ellie and Jerry turn their noses up at, and pretend they’re too good for. Julian’s not above listening at doors, not if it ensures justice triumphs. 

He’d overheard Miguel whispering about Justice Novelli taking a boat trip, and something about an exchange of briefcases with an unidentified contact. The whole thing had smacked of some sort of underhanded conspiracy, and he’d thought it his duty to investigate. 

In retrospect, it sounds a good deal more like a put-up job, designed to send Julian haring out of town on a fool’s errand. He’d congratulated himself on avoiding meeting Justice Novelli on the way, and hadn’t established it was because he wasn’t there until after the boat was under way. 

He’s pretty sure Miguel hadn’t intended for the boat to sink, though. Julian dislikes the man – despises him, even – but he’s fairly confident Miguel couldn’t organise a rogue wave, no matter how annoying he finds it when Julian proves him wrong yet again. 

\- 

Hauling himself up onto the top of the rock, Julian stares in disbelief. He can see lights on the headland. He’s not even that far from shore; it can scarcely be more than a mile. Which raises the question: where on earth are his rescuers? 

Perhaps the lifeboat has capsized. Perhaps the swimmers have drowned. But surely, _surely_ , someone would have still come out to investigate the wreck? Unless the Coastguard have already been, and think they’ve rescued everyone. Unless everyone else who was on the boat is currently swaddled in blankets and drinking cocoa, and he’s simply been forgotten. 

Julian’s used to not being popular: he didn’t become a lawyer to be well-liked. He’s not used to being _overlooked_. 

\- 

They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity; Julian’s never believed it. There most certainly _is_ , and it’s when everyone knows _who_ you are without you choosing _why_. 

He’s had a lot of practice at refining his image. It’s important to be noticed, yes, but not to stand out. If everyone remembers him by the pepper and the bow ties, no one bothers to notice all the other ways in which Julian doesn’t – quite – fit in. He’s always been a quick study, and he learned a long time ago just how valuable misdirection can be. It’s become habit now to flirt with all the women he meets, and if sometimes it comes out a little insincere, well, he’s persistent enough that no one ever guesses why. 

He can’t swim, but if he skates over the surface of the water fast enough, he doesn’t need to. It’s not a problem so long as he can keep on moving; onwards and upwards and always _away_ from the place he came from. 

\- 

A long time ago, Julian and his mother came to an agreement. He wouldn’t interfere in her life, and she’d give him the same courtesy. She and Victor have a gaggle of children and three Laundromats somewhere in the Midwest, and if Julian ever wonders if clothes aren’t the only thing being laundered, he lets the thought get no further. In return, she’ll never show up in D.C., to acknowledge him as her son. 

It’s a _practical_ arrangement; maybe a little cold, but it’s worked for both of them. Julian supposes he ought to regret that they weren’t closer, now that he’s going to die, but if he’s really honest with himself, he doesn’t. 

They went through a rough patch when he hit puberty: no longer a cute kid who’d play up to the boyfriends for whatever he could get out of them, but a frustrated teen. He’d asked his mother once why she didn’t work. She’d laughed – not unkindly, but with genuine amusement – and asked him what job he thought would pay so well as the boyfriends. He hadn’t had an answer then, and he doesn’t now, but he’d decided that he’d never let anyone make a fool of him like that, and he’d sacrifice whatever it took to make his own way in the world. 

He’d forced himself to be pleasant to the next boyfriend, and for seven months they’d exchanged a cold mobile home for an upmarket country club. His mother swam, and focused on upgrading the boyfriend to a better model, and Julian began learning how to network. The club was full of elderly, professional men who were perhaps a little lonely, and willing to talk for hours about how they’d got to where they were in life. 

Julian had stayed in contact, and when he’d filled in the forms to change his name, two of his elderly mentors had supplied the necessary affidavits of his good character. They’d both smiled when they saw the new name he’d chosen: Julian Lodge sounded so _conventional_ , and only he and they would ever know it was also the place where he’d begun his long, slow climb into a better life. 

\- 

By the time the waves are lapping at the top of the rocks, Julian’s not really thinking about the past any more. He’s not really thinking about the fact that he’s going to drown within sight of the shore. He’s not even thinking about the fact that the wind has dropped, and the sea is calm, and the conditions are as nearly perfect for a first attempt at swimming as he could possibly ask for. 

He’s not thinking about the dark. He’s not thinking about the cold. He’s not thinking about the water, softly rising up to take him. 

He’s not thinking at all. 

In his mind, he sees himself back in Washington. He sees himself walking up the steps of the Supreme Court; wet, slimy with seaweed, utterly dishevelled. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the way heads turn: once at the state of him, and once again when they realise who it is underneath all the wreckage of the ocean. 

The picture in his mind is small and far-off, but it’s very clear. Julian sees himself walking to Justice Novelli’s chambers, as though he could possibly be going anywhere else. He sees himself gently removing Ellie’s hand from his shoulder; brushing off her voluble concern; telling her that she should worry less about everything. He sees himself raising a sardonic eyebrow at Miguel, who turns away, ashamed. And then he sees himself walking up to Jerry, and kissing him and kissing him and kissing him. 

That’s where the picture breaks up. Sometimes Jerry pushes him away, and sometimes he punches Julian. Sometimes Miguel holds his arms behind his back so that Jerry can hit him. Sometimes no one lays a finger on him, and it’s only the disgust in Jerry’s eyes that bruises and pains. 

Sometimes Jerry kisses him back, and that may just be the most frightening possibility of all. 

\- 

When the first wave sweeps over the top of the rock, Julian nods as if something’s been decided, even though nobody is still the only one there with him. 

He’s not afraid any more. Maybe he never learned to swim, but he’s never quite been able to stop being his mother’s son. He’s going to get in the water and swim for as long as it takes, and then he’s going to get his man. 

Maybe it won’t be Jerry. Maybe, if he’s really honest, he’s not exactly spoiled for potential choices. Jerry is one of the extremely limited number of people who will have a civil conversation with him, but he doesn’t even know if Jerry actually _likes_ him, or if he simply has better manners than Ellie and Miguel. But Julian’s worked himself up from out of nowhere to the Supreme Court. He’s pretty sure he can handle a – partner. He’s had enough of boyfriends for one lifetime. 

He takes off his shoes, and sets them down on the rock, and if the sea sweeps them away, only nobody will know. He removes his suit jacket, his vest and his bow tie, and then his pants. This is going to be hard enough without wet fabric dragging him down. He can’t quite shake the thought that he’s leaving behind more than a few pieces of expensive cloth. 

A wave swirls around him, throwing him off balance, and Julian takes a deep breath. He’s not going to sit here and wait to die. He’s thirty-two years old, and he wants to make it to thirty-three. He’s an intelligent man, and he knows that the human body floats in water. 

Julian sets his sights on the nearest light, and tries to fix its direction in his mind. He’s spent all his life keeping his head above water. 

He’s not going to fail now. 

He crouches down, and waits for the next wave. 


End file.
